Henry Cavill has been cast in The Highlander reboot

WrenBoy

I was wondering when they were going to get around to rebooting Highlander, I've been saying it for ages. It makes sense with the success of GoT, the Witcher and the other sword and magic shows on at the minute. The audience is there and Cavill will draw in loads too.
Another step closer to rebooting a live action version of Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. :pac:

Brief_Lives

Rumours that Cavill has dropped out of the remake/reboot...

Melanchthon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120169180#Comment_120169180

he's doing the Warhammer/games workshop stuff isn't he?

That could end up as a big commitment if it succeeds (doubtful) and he is playing one of the characters that have multiple novels

corkie

https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/ent/exclusive-henry-cavill-replaced-highlander-chris-hemsworth.html

Henry Cavill seems to be having himself a whirlwind of opportunities, but also cancelations that are combating those new opportunities. Through our trusted and proven sources, we can report that Henry Cavill has now been dropped from starring in the Highlander remake, and Chris Hemsworth is now being targeted for the role. Cavill has now been let go from three separate franchises in the last few months.

Brief_Lives

that website seems to want us to believe that it was him being dropped... i would think it was the opposite..

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117293914#Comment_117293914

Hey. It's a kind of magic.

Sad Professor

I love the original Highlander and hate pretty much everything that followed including the series. I don't think any of them captured what made the original work, half of which was Freddie Mercury crooning about not wanting to live forever. Also just how down right weird present day Lambert is in that film. The premise of immortals having sword fights etc is really nothing on its own.

pixelburp

Highlander is a good example of something that's perhaps not actually good on any technical or structural level, but kinda magnetic in a purely trashy, pulpy sorta way. It entertains, despite the very overt flaws.

Minus the Queen soundtrack it's a bit shít, but still has that charisma of an interesting idea executed with just about the right amount of brio to compensate for (as an example) its lead's total lack of talent.

Fysh

Honestly, the best effort I can think of at giving the franchise some life was probably the animated series (and I say this as someone who generally enjoyed the series when it originally aired).

The live-action stuff is phenomenally 80s/early 90s in its styling, relying hugely on moody blokes in trenchcoats having swordfights in the street and the kind of cod-historical drama that's somewhere around Braveheart levels of sophistication. The Queen soundtrack on the first film is a large part of why it came together at all, so in the absence of both that music and that setting, you've just got a fairly dull premise.

The animated series felt very much like one of those "we'll greenlight your idea but you're grafting these names and ideas into the end result so we can reuse this IP/branding" - but it was at least something different (set in a far future where the immortals were still somehow tramping round the place). Its biggest issue in terms of "lore" (>spits on ground in disgust<) is probably that the Immortals have found a non-death-based quickening method that can be used by the protagonist to accumulate skills and knowledge to defeat the big bad... At least, IIRC.

loyatemu

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120170581#Comment_120170581

I loved it when it came out and I was 11 or whatever, but I saw it a couple of years ago on TV and it's dreadful, and I say that having watched and enjoyed a lot of old 80s/90s action classics with my kids recently. Highlander by comparison doesn't stand up at all, the story is dumb, the acting terrible, and the effects laughable. (I recall seeing Highlander II in the cinema and thinking even then that it was terrible, IIRC it features a lot of talking and guff about aliens and the environment).

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120191371#Comment_120191371

Highlander II is one of the worst sequels ever made. I don't mean that flippantly it is utter Battlefield Earth Zardoz level nonsense.

Completely ignored by anything that came after.

Tony EH

Zardoz is great.

Agent Coulson

Still happening

https://deadline.com/2023/10/henry-cavill-highlander-chad-stahelski-reboot-lionsgate-movie-afm-1235585000/

pixelburp

Reported budget of 100+ million? JFC does Hollywood learn nothing bomb to bomb? And Blumhouse are right over there, knocking out cheap hits and making bank off tiny budgets. Exorcist notwithstanding?

As preemptive as it might be, am gonna stick my neck out and say this is gonna flop cos Highlander was many things but it started as relatively cheap 80s trash - not some tentpole IP redo.

CastorTroy

Will they try and reuse Queen or will they try and modernise it by using someone like Taylor Swift or Harry Styles?

Fysh

A while back I rewatched the original film, having been quite fond of it (and, for my sins, a fair bit of the TV series) when I was younger.

It is not a good film, and relies a lot on good music and mood to get by. And it only gets worse with the sequels (though I haven't seen the most recent one).

I honestly don't understand why someone would think this is a smart play for a big-budget film project. A constrained budget with a clever, innovative team who are given creative freedom (possibly coupled with a TV rather than film format) might have a better chance, but this feels like it's going to land on its arse and a bunch of execs will stand around wondering how that's possible.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121299275#Comment_121299275

A constrained budget with a clever, innovative team who are given creative freedom (possibly coupled with a TV rather than film format) might have a better chance, but this feels like it's going to land on its arse and a bunch of execs will stand around wondering how that's possible.

Pitched it as a theory before but. Substitute Highlander for Terminator, Aliens, RoboCop, Halloween, Predator, etc etc... it keeps happening that there's this belief you can take a previously scrappy, low budget films with sometimes subversive hearts and turn them into corporate, executive driven projects. Or you give it to David Gordon Green and it goes to shít in a different way?

I see they're trying to do Toxic Avenger again, and it's supposedly gonna be a hard R so maybe some people remember to keep the heart of these things intact.

Fysh

It's just mindboggling - even the first film didn't do particularly well financially against its estimated $16M budget, so the notion of throwing ten times that at it (and doing the increasingly-common franchise-first approach) makes no sense to me.

The Toxic Avenger remake has a good cast but the more important thing is having Lloyd Kaufman of Troma involved; it's not a guarantee of a good end result, but it at least suggests an attempt to get it right.

Agent Coulson

To be honest Highlander was better as a TV series and Duncan was better than Conor.

$100m is crazy money to spend on it considering the same team made the first two John Wick movies for about $35m each and were only given bigger budgets for 3&4 when the box office for 2 made a huge profit

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121301605#Comment_121301605

Well that makes a huge difference then regards the Toxic Avenger, cos having original voices and creative forces is preferable to some later fanboy obsessed with iconography over depth or context - though Ridley Scott returning to the Alien universe kinda blows out my own theory.

As @Agent Coulson says it's a concept possibly better suited to a TV series than a, snort, 100 million dollar blockbuster. One that was done already with Mark Wahlberg's rather terrible Infinite.

Agent Coulson

Netflix also did it with Charlize Theron in The Old Guard which has a sequel coming soon.

The Old Guard had a $70m budget which is a Netflix throw money at everything budget.

I wll say I did enjoy The Old Guard.

pixelburp

Oh yeah forgot the Old Guard. Think a lot of that money was on Theron cos I thought it looked like a TV pilot half the time.

Fysh

Yeah, the Old Guard was a bit of a swing and a miss for me - but then, between a lack of confidence in its own material in the writing and the original comic being nothing much to write home about, I didn't think it was ever going to be great...

JP Liz V1

New Lionsgate film(s) confirmed at CinemaCon 2024

Highlander directed by Chad Stahelski.

Hande hoche!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121298234#Comment_121298234

Lizzo or Billie Eilish, one would reckon.

p to the e

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122003842#Comment_122003842

Lizzo has been cancelled I'm afraid. Hopefully Busted get back together for it.

breezy1985

Who would have thought that Highlander really would be immortal. Despite some valiant attempts (The Quickening, The Source) it just won't die.

The movie is absolutely amazing but its got that inexplicable 80's movie thing that just somehow worked in that moment in time. I loved the TV show (don't know if it holds up) but it's also a movie series famous for one of the most terrible sequels ever and over has more bad incarnations than good.

Very brave and probably stupid to try recreate the kind of magic that was the original.

Hande hoche!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122004439#Comment_122004439

Right you are, forgot about her backup danger sage. We might be able to reform McBusted for the soundtrack.

JP Liz V1

Drew McIntyre needs to be in it, even just a cameo

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122016738#Comment_122016738

And definitely Jesse Rae.